Dancing with the starry eyes

For fashion models, whose cache depends on radiating such things as beauty and luxury, hard-core social work is less in the mix. Yet, every once in a while there comes a beauty with brains who yearns to keep it real and doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty with a cause that she’s passionate about.

City girl Sushruthi Krishna danced with Shahrukh Khan, even as she was crowned the first runner-up in the Miss India pageant this year — things that dreams are made up of. But the 22-year-old architect has work cut out for her — designing bathrooms for government schools in the city, a project that she is seeing through fervently.

“If you’d told me a couple of years ago that I was going to be on the big stages, I’d have probably laughed it off,” she tells us. Sushruthi confesses that she was on the plumper side, lived in t-shirts with her go-to makeup being lip gloss and kajal. The glitz and aglamour of the ramp was not always on the cards for her.

“My parents are educators and they both have been big on the idea of education. I love design and my career choices always inclined towards it. When not designing buildings, it was art sets, props or costumes,” she says.

Her rise to the top has been quite phenomenal. After she stood one in 21 in last year’s Miss India pageant, she only returned this year to be placed in the top three. “Seeing as the entertainment industry is new to me, it’s been a great learning curve. I hope to take what I learn here and put it back into my passion, architecture and design,” she says. She hasn’t left behind her projects either. “A friend and I started off the Anatta Initiative through which we build toilets for government schools. It was heartbreaking to see the conditions in which these kids studied and we wanted to make sure that we gave them a conducive environment for growth and learning. We decided that we had the knowledge data base and backing to do something like this, so, why not?” says the lass about the project that’s close to her heart. “We’ve built around 10 so far in the Hosahalli and Dommasandra areas and we are now in talks with a few more schools around Whitefield,” she adds.

The driven diva also finds some time for her self. A professional dancer, Sushruthi was earlier a part of Bengaluru-based Nritarutya. “It still continues to be one of those things I do to let myself out,” she says. “I’m also big on gymming but I’m also a foodie. As much as I’ve got to keep fit, I will always have my eyes on that plate of masala puri,” she grins. After all, focus has always been one of her strong points.